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iloveyoupittsburghpirates-blog · 6 years

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I’m Keeping Things In Perspective, Pittsburgh Pirates

My Dearest Pittsburgh Pirates,

Believe me, I’m not allowing myself to get too excited. Or at least I’m trying my hardest. After sweeping the Tigers to begin the season 3-0, there were reasons to be slightly more optimistic after what the offseason made me believe. This week took that a tiny step further. A two-game series against the Twins and a four-game series against the Reds isn’t any type of ultimate test, though the Twins are in first place and were a playoff team last year. You were only able to split the series with them but that’s acceptable even at home. The Cincinnati Reds are a team that’s basically been rebuilding since the 2013 Wildcard game, but more specifically over the last two years. Last season, they were in last place and finished 68-94. You played them nineteen times. You went 6-13 with them outscoring you 84-60. Honestly, I was surprised you won six. It felt like they beat you every time. This weekend you set the tone winning three out of four and blew a 4-0 lead in the game you lost. Not that blowing leads is something to hang your hat on, but they were mostly overmatched. That 14-3 thumping on Thursday got the series off to the right start. Your offense has been the driving force behind your 7-2 start. Your .814 team OPS ranks second in all of baseball. You’re averaging over six runs per game. Seven of the eight players in your everyday lineup have an OPS over .800. Three of them are over .900. The pitching talent you have faced so far has been less than stellar but last year you didn’t rip crappy pitching. So far, you have and I welcome the change.

This offense could be something special. Obviously, it’s hard to rely on any of the stats this early but the numbers currently speak for themselves. The biggest differences from last year so far (other than JHay and Mercer having an OPS over .800) is the newest additions, Colin Moran and Corey Dickerson. They have combined for 2 home runs and 15 RBI’s. Dickerson splits of .303/.324/.576 make for a .900 OPS. That .324 OBP is a little low but that slugging percentage more than makes up for it. He has a history of being a streaky player so there are sure to be slumps in the future. I love what I’m seeing especially adding another lefty power bat to the lineup. Moran is the same way. His splits of .345/.387/.517 make for a .904 OPS. If he keeps up at anything resembling this pace, he could make the Cole trade worth it and can make this lineup top tier. That’s if Gregory Polanco keeps playing like he’s been playing and can stay healthy. I have thought prior times that he could finally breakout but I have been disappointed when he hasn’t. This feels different. I still don’t trust his ability to stay healthy, but he looks like a different player. He already has 3 homers and his 13 RBI’s leads the league. His splits of .310/.447/.759 for a 1.206 OPS are video game like. He could change this entire team. If he keeps playing like this, he will be one of the best players in the league. We saw for a few years what that can do to a lineup. But for any of that to come to fruition, he needs to remain healthy. That could determine the outcome of your entire season.

With so much praise, I feel the need to be critical. I am a Pittsburgh Pirates’ fan after all. The pitching needs to improve in both facets. The starting pitching statistically has been strong. The starters’ ERA (3.14) ranks 4th in the majors, the batting average against (.225) is 7th, the WHIP (1.18) ranks 10th, and the OPS against (.637) is 6th. Those are all much better numbers than I expected going into the season. There is an issue that needs rectified. The starters so far have averaged pitching 5.74 innings per start and that number is only that high because of Jameson Taillon. The rest of the starters (Nova, Williams, Kuhl, and Brault in place of the injured Musgrove) have rarely went past five innings and that’s not sustainable especially with question marks in the bullpen. The relievers overall numbers are bad. The relievers WHIP, the most important stat for a reliever, is 1.56 which ranks 28th in the majors. Their batting average against (.252) is 28th and their OPS against (.775) is 26th. There have been positives like Edgar Santana (0.60 WHIP) who has solidified his role as fourth in line. Felipe Rivero, George Kontos, and Michael Feliz all have elevated WHIPs but that’s due to each of them having one bad outing. The rest of the time they have been terrific. The rest of the bullpen has not. Doyydas Neverauskas has been terrible like blowing a two-run lead on Saturday that led to the lone loss in the Reds’ series. Josh Smoker doesn’t appear to be someone who should be on a major league roster and Tyler Glasnow nor recently promoted Clay Holmes can be relied on in any high leverage situations. That’s why longer outings from the starters is so paramount. You can’t pitch the same four relievers every night. You need to find better options than Smoker or Neverauskas (Schugel or Siegrist?) or you will keep getting burned like you did Saturday. Something to consider.

I mentioned Jameson Taillon but I felt it was necessary to expand after his performance yesterday. Taillon pitched the game of his life and looked like a true ace. He threw a one-hit, complete game shutout in your 5-0 victory over the Reds. He walked two and struck out seven over 110 pitches. It was a masterful performance. Combine that with his first solid start in the home opener on Tuesday (5 1/3 IP 4 H 2 ER 0 BB 9 K) and he walks away as the National League Player of the Week. After two starts, he sports a 1.26 ERA and a 0.49 WHIP. Taillon is in the same category as Polanco. He looks different. He looks like he could be stepping into elite status this year, but only if he can stay healthy. The Polanco situation is even different because Adam Frazier isn’t a bad option to fill in during a DL stint. That’s not the case with Taillon. There is no reasonable replacement. He’s the unquestioned ace of this staff and he’s one of the few that can go at least seven innings on a regular basis. For you to be successful, he needs to make it to thirty starts this season. I believe he’s capable. I also believe that now would be the time to try and sign him to a contract extension. With his injury issues and the fact that he’s not a Scott Boras client, it could be possible to get him at a realistic rate. If you wait until after this season and he ends up as one of the best starters in baseball, it might be too late. Something to consider.

Today was supposed to be the beginning of your series against the Cubs but snow showers, in April, cancelled it. Fortunately, because it’s their home opener, there was an off day scheduled tomorrow so it will be made up then. They also play them Wednesday and Thursday before travelling to Miami to face the last place, rebuilding Marlins. The Cubs are 5-4 and hold second place in the division. They are the odds-on pick to win the division and contend for the World Series. Jake Arrieta is gone but they retooled their rotation signing both Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood after trading for Jose Quintana last year. They still have a quality lineup, so they are your tallest task in what should be a competitive division. Miami was expected to have the worst team this year after trading away their entire outfield for prospects. They are 3-6 and should be a team you beat down, even on the road. A 4-2 week would be terrific. I’m very interested to see how this offense does against pitching like the Cubs and to see how you generally stack up against that team. It’s still early but your performance in that series could show early signs of your true potential. I’m trying not to get ahead of myself but a good performance in that series could get me more excited. Just keep doing what you have been doing and this season could be more interesting than anticipated. Good luck and talk to you next week!

Trying To Maintain Perspective,

Brad

P.S. still stands for “Plugging Something” and I still need to work on that phrasing. Another friendly reminder that the radio play podcast I co-wrote with Chris Maxwell called DEATH AT SUNSET: HARD TIMES AND SOFT DRINKS is still available on Apple Podcasts (aka iTunes), Stitcher Radio, Google Play Radio, and SoundCloud. It’s four 20 minute (ish) episodes of a noir comedy that follows P.I. Jack Dime as he tackles cases in modern day Los Angeles. Please follow us @deathatsunset on Twitter, check out DeathatSunset.com, and please rate and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I truly appreciate anyone who takes time to read my letters and I would appreciate it even more if you check out this podcast we are very proud of. Thank you so much!!

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deztinywarriors · 6 years

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ES Spectre 2.0 Chapter 26

#Playchoices #Choices #pixelberry #endless summer #ES #adventure #fanfic #fanfiction

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thefootballlife · 4 years

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Where did it all go wrong for Maribor?

Way back last July, literally now over a year ago, I wrote the season preview for the Prva Liga. It opened with the line: “Rarely could a season seem on the face of it so utterly predictable.”

Maribor had cantered to the title last season by ten points. They added the best player of the team in second place and then added the best player not already at the club. Last night, they were almost certainly eliminated from title contention with three games to go and, potentially, face a fight to even retain a place in Europe next season. It has been the result of a season that has gone spectacularly wrong for the club in almost all areas and has seen them, if anything, get only worse as the season went on - what happened?

Spiro Pericic (aka The Defence)

It might seem a bit flippant to start the blame party with a player who has only started about 75% of games and who has plenty of good about him, but he’s also perhaps the perfect exemplification of everything that’s an issue with the Maribor defence. Last season had solidity at the back and Pericic was, originally, brought in to provide a replacement for Marko Suler.

Except where Suler had a positional sense that made up for his lack of pace that had come with age, Pericic is entirely a physical presence. That’s no bad thing - against Celje last night, he was able to score from a near post flick on at a corner because he was strong enough to hold off about three men at his back. He’s good at that. Throw a ball in the box and he’ll head it away. Give him a test of strength and he’ll win it.

Unfortunately for Maribor, not many teams in Slovenia play like that. Most of them are well aware that that’s what Pericic is good at and that he lacks the speed and agility to really make much impact against a player running at him. With injuries perhaps giving him more time than he might have expected at the start of the season and forcing in less reliable or experienced options, such as Luka Koblar, which has broken up the organisational fluency of the defensive unit.

The result has been fairly simple - teams know that if you have a particularly mobile frontline against Maribor, they will struggle in terms of firstly the movement of the players in a quite literal sense and then, secondly, the recovery phase of their shape - this was exemplified from a goal conceded in their loss to Tabor Sezana last week. Pericic has Bongongui run at him and is unable to even really slow him down, never mind make an effective challenge. From there, Bongongui is able to take a shot and Mitrovic drops back to the line to cover his keeper. When the shot is parried, the rest of the defence pushes forward to try to catch Stefan Stevanovic offside, not realising Mitrovic is on the line, while Pericic gets sucked in to Bongongui to give Stevanovic even more space - eventually he has time to take a touch, make a turn and slot home all while he is about 5 yards out. It was as poor a goal as you could concede. It was hardly the first time Maribor’s physicality and organisation have been caught out - it did for them in the Champions League and it has done for them in the domestic league.

Creativity

Who is Maribor’s most dangerous attacker this term? Zahovic? Kronaveter? Pozeg Vancas?

You’d have had long odds on it being a 20 year old winger with no previous first team experience sent on loan to a promoted side, but the answer is none other than the excellent Aljosa Matko, on loan at Bravo and loving it. The expensively assembled squadron of attackers at the club haven’t exactly misfired, but they haven’t shone. Rudi Pozeg Vancas is having a far less productive season than last time. Rok Kronaveter the same. Luka Zahovic is way off his normal standards. Maribor may have the names on paper to suggest that they should be excellent, but they simply haven’t worked on the field.

The answer as to why is difficult to glean but it is, more than anything, an extension of trends on the field that had been apparent for a couple of season. Maribor were a good side, but never one you would pay to watch. Their play was methodical and in straight lines - oppressive yet effective. In theory, the additions over the summer should have helped that out - Kronaveter has great vision in close quarters and offers threat from distance, Pozeg Vancas cuts in, makes overlaps and similarly provides a different threat.

But that’s been seen all too little. Instead, each player’s positive attributes have disrupted the side. Maribor liked crossing and pinning sides back but Pozeg Vancas forces them to play for overlaps that their full backs don’t often support. Kronaveter disrupts the patience because he looks for killer balls and quick options. The result is a strikeforce that’s left isolated and while Sergej Jakirovic has shifted pieces around to try to compensate for this, the problem is that the depth around the side has forced him to bring in players who simply aren’t up to the task of being more than an option from the bench such as Felipe Santos and Jasmin Mesanovic.

In addition, none of these players mentioned are particularly fleet-footed - in a league where the majority of sides have, as they’ve developed this season, grown into swift sides who move the ball more quickly than sides would have last season, Maribor have stayed static at best, both metaphorically and literally. The other side who have done that are Domzale and, similarly, their drop off in performance from season to season has been marked (albeit there are other factors in play there).

Drift

The Zahovic and Milanic era of Maribor had been drifting to a close for a little while. It could have come to a close when Olimpija won the title under Biscan - but at least that Olimpija side was a brilliant side packed with character and not this brittle generation. It could have come to a close last season, but sides around them fell apart and a title was won with ease. It did come to a close this season but with plenty of recrimination - money is tight, a generation of youth talent has more or less done nothing and that’s before you get to the issues mentioned above. The investments in playing staff made last summer weren’t just a statement in terms of trying to win the title, they were meant to be a broom bringing in far more enticing play to get bums in seats.

They didn’t work and Maribor have a new regime in place under sporting director Oliver Bogatinov and manager Sergej Jakirovic. From the second that Jakirovic was announced, it was clear that he would need a transfer window to be able to impose himself on the squad. He didn’t do badly at the start, dragging Maribor into the title race but a series of negative results have put an end to that - Maribor have had four negatives on the spin, three losses and a win against Mura that they won at the death and were perhaps a bit lucky to do so. Jakirovic hasn’t galvanised the side and, to be fair, has focused on next season, arranging deals for Jan Repas, Ilija Martinovic and Azbe Jug as a way to sort out the entire spine of the side to bring it up to something Jakirovic can use to his liking. The players he has currently are not that. Anyone who watched Jakirovic’s swift and often exhilarating Gorica side will know that.

Of course, needing a transfer window hardly excuses some of the results that have been seen and some of the performances. Against Olimpija, they were dominant but blunt. Against Tabor Sezana, they were disorganised and shabby, Against Celje, well, they were just victims of something Maribor have rarely been over the past decade and a half - they were beaten by a better domestic side absolutely clean as a whistle

Next Season

Maribor do have one outstanding issue this season - European Qualification. With Mura having taken the cup, it means that fourth will not be good enough and, while Maribor sit third, they sit only four points clear of Aluminij in fourth - the same side Maribor will be playing away to on the final day of the season. It isn’t likely that Maribor will find themselves devoid of European football altogether, but it does mean that they can’t shift focus yet.

Jakirovic’s job for next season is to regain the title but it’s worth noting already that, while that has been the aim since day one and that ambitions this season only came about from the results of others, it’s hard to sit here now and state that Maribor are making ample progress towards becoming a leaner, meaner and more physical outfit. Perhaps the biggest impediment to that right now is the one central area of the pitch they haven’t yet sought a replacement for - striker.

Goals are an issue and relying on Marcos Tavares is concerning. He may be reliable, he may be a legend, but he is also 36 and simply not capable of bringing it for 36 games a season any more, especially when those games are two a week as they have been of late. Relying on Amir Dervisevic to play quarterback is a problem as well if you want physicality in the centre of the midfield because he isn’t a mobile player, but Jakirovic has been forced to do so. Work is being done on the side, but it’s clear there’s an awful lot of work still to be carried out and perhaps key to that will be that, like last summer and Sasa Ivkovic, Maribor can get a saleable asset to depart, which may well have to be Luka Zahovic. That would be a big call by the side to sell their main goal threat but one that might have to be made to try to fix the rest of the side.

A year ago, I said that a season could rarely seem so predictable. We are now over 12 months into it and we have seen a team likely go winless through the season, Celje be involved in a title race to the end, Domzale end near a relegation fight and, yes, a world stopping pandemic interrupt football for a couple of months.

But none of that stands as less predictable than Maribor’s dramatic fall from grace.

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thesportssoundoff · 7 years

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A Return To Normalcy Through Rotterdam; UFC Fight Card Preview

Joey

August 30th

So y'all ready to get back to common sense yet? If so then the MMA world gets back to doing it's usual with a card from Rotterdam, Netherlands by way of the UFC. It's a Fight Pass show which means its quality ranks somewhere between "Oh that looks intriguing" and "Oh my god what is this garbage?!" It's also been damaged by injuries up and down the build but we can get to that. The headliner is a really intriguing HW fight between former Bellator HW Alexander Volkov and UFC long timer Stefan Struve. The co-main was supposed to be a VERY intriguing on paper fight between Germaine De Randamie and Marion Reneau but GDR pulled out and so Brazilian Talita de Oliveira is tasked with taking the fight. The main card undercard stuff is blecch (Barberena vs Edwards should be dull but important and worth watching) BUT there's some very intriguing preliminary stuff worth keeping your eye on. It's been a while so let's run through our metrics before we delve into this show:

Fights: 12? (Thibault Gouti vs Andrew Holbrook seems to be confirmed except not really except hold on except yeah except no so...)

Debuts: 7 (Mads Burnell, Talita de Oliveira, Rob Wilkinson, Aleksandr Rakic, Zabit Magomedsharipov, Mike Santiago, Abdul-Kerim Edilov)

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: (Abu Azatair out, Rob Wilkinson IN vs Siyar Bahadurzada/ Germaine de Randamie out, Talita de Oliveira IN vs Marion Reneau/ Marcos Rogerio de Lima vs Sairbek Saparov cancelled/ Nick Hein out, Mike Santiago IN vs Zabit Magomedsharipov/Islam Mackachev out, Mads Burnell IN vs Michel Prezares)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 4 (Marion Reneau, Stefan Struve, Andrew Holbrook, Rustam Khabilov)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 1 (Thibault Gouti)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 6 (Leon Edwards, Alexander Volkov, Stefan Struve, Mairbek Taisumov, Michel Prezares, Rustam Khabilov)

Stat Monitor for 2017:

Debuting Fighters (Current number: 22-20)- Mads Burnell, Talita de Oliveira, Rob Wilkinson, Aleksandr Rakic, Zabit Magomedsharipov, Mike Santiago, Abdul-Kerim Edilov

Short Notice Fighters (Current number: 17-21)- Rob Wilkinson, Talita de Oliveira, Mads Burnell, Mike Santiago

Second Fight (Current number: 22-25)- Desmond Green, Felipe Silva

Cage Corrosion (8-5)- Siyar Bahadurzada, Mairbek Taisumov, Thibault Gouti

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- Let's start with the main event. Along with, say, Curtis Blaydes, Francis Ngannou, Junior Albini and Justin Ledet, it's reasonable to refer to Volkov as one of the fresher faces in the HW division. He's 2-0 in the division with wins over credible names although to deem them impressive wins would probably be stretching it. On the other hand, Stefan Struve is the second longest tenured current UFC heavyweight behind JDS. He probably is what he is; a well rounded competent big guy who will never dance among the elites of the division no matter how many wins he racks up. There is a ceiling and he's just about hit it, incoming jokes about his height aside. At the same time, the same could be said about Alexander Volkov who has already won gold elsewhere, is probably maxed out in terms of his potential and his place in the MMA universe. It's a good fight but one where the only upside for the winner is getting squashed by one of the top stars in the division.

2- Does Stefan Struve finally showcase some head movement in a fight or has that horse left the barn?

3- Stipe probably fights either Cain or Ngannou, JDS is suspended for PEDs, Overeem has fought Struve before, Werdum is fighting Lewis----so who does the winner of this thing face?

4- Bryan Barberena's run since defeating Sage Northcutt; main card fight vs highly touted Warrely Alves, prelim fight against a better version of himself in Colby Covington, undercard rebound fight vs a good fighter in Joe Proctor and now a Fight Pass card fight vs really great stylistic matchup in Leon Edwards. I'm sure it's nothing personal.

5- So one of the things which has been discussed recently is the development of Leon Edwards' overall MMA game and where he can fit into the welterweight scene. Edwards has always showcased solid defensive wrestling but since his loss to Kamaru Usman, it's like he's discovered the importance of offensive wrestling as well. We've seen his hands before but the challenge is always going to be whether he can show everything all at once (plus unleashing his usually good kicks more consistently) as he moves up the ranks. Edwards could be a sleeper at 170 lbs.

6- Mairbek Taisumov went from potentially fighting Anthony Pettis in the Spring to fighting Felipe Silva on the prelims of a Fight Pass card for no good reason other than that Pettis didn't want the fight (unless there's some VISA issue with Taisumov). MMA is harsh sometimes.

7- I wonder if people realize how good the LW and WW fights on this card are. Even if I have zeo interest in watching Edwards vs Barberena, it's a worthwhile fight at 170 lbs given that both guys are under 30 at a division that's in need of a few new guys to freshen up the scene a little. Darren Till vs Bojan Velikovic is a really good fight that figures to be action packed judged by Till's prior performance and Bojan's career resume of crazy action fights. At 155 lbs, Mairbek Taisumov is all action all the time and Felipe Silva had a very impressive UFC debut. Michel Prezares is starting to finish fights now plus you have a debuting fighter in Mads Burnell who will likely be a tough challenge for what Prezares likes to do. Rustam Khaiblov vs Desmond Green is a stylistic nightmare (two cardio heavy wrestlers) but both are deserving of their plaudits plus they have enough other tools to not be completely one dimensional. Ignore the fight between Thibault Gouti and Andrew Holbrook for a second because it's kinda trash.

8- Mike Santiago fought on the Dana White Tuesday Night Contender's Series last Tuesday at 155 lbs. He'll travel to Rotterdam to fight a top level prospect in Zabit Magomedsharipov at 145 lbs. MMA, again, is fucking harsh.

9- Marion Reneau vs Talita de Oliveira is primarily interesting if only to see how long it takes Reneau to get the job done. She is at times a play with her food type fighter.

10- I wonder if the UFC will mention the ties that Abdul-Kerim Edilov's ties to the Chechen dictator? Can't really run from it, ya know?

11- Bojan Mihajlovic and Thibault Gouti on the same card oh lord help us.

12- With Brian Stann likely stepping out and new commentators possibly stepping up, I wonder if Dan Hardy will up his game?

Must Wins

Alexander Volkov

You can say plenty of things about Stefan Struve but one thing you can't say is that he loses to nobodies. His worst loss is probably Jared Rosholt but just about every fighter who has beat him has either been in a #1 contender fight or fought for the title. Struve's fought two former UFC champs (JDS and Miocic) plus guys who fought for the title like Overeem and Hunt. Volkov is 28, he's well rounded, he's got size to him and he fights in a division where your ability is your activity. A win over Struve and the doors are wide open.

Darren Till

We know this shit is said all the time BUT the UK is going to need new faces eventually. Darren Till, despite training/living out in Brazil, can be one of those guys given his youth, skill set and his size. After gassing out hard vs Nicholas Dalby, Till took some time off, healed up, missed weight (:/) and returned to put on a really impressive display of skills vs Jessin Ayari. Bojan Velickovic is a different animal entirely, simply a much better fighter than Ayari plus a tougher stylistic matchup. This is a good test for Till.

Mairbek Taisumov

If Mairbek Taisumov was Glenn Johnson, he'd be headlining an event at this point. That's not to suggest that the UFC is holding him back because he's Russian but to point out that no big name wants to fight some unknown Russian dude who seemingly only fights, suspiciously, in the UK these days. Taisumov is a fantastic striker with other aspects of his game rounding out but he needs this win vs Felipe Silva because at some point a dude who has finished five fights in a row will be due for a big step up.

Five Fights You Shouldn't Miss

1- Mairbek Taisumov vs Felipe Silva

Mairbek Taisumov has finished four fights in a row, he's gotten two 50K bonuses in a row, and he's fighting an unheralded Brazilian who finished his UFC debut vs a good striker. That's all ya need really.

2- Leon Edwards vs Brian Barberena

This may not be a pretty fight but it's a divisionally relevant fight with implications on the UK fight scene. If Edwards turns out to be what we all figure he CAN be then maybe the UK has a new top 10 WW to get really excited about.

3- Alexander Volkov vs Stefan Struve

Two stand up strikers at a division where one punch can end the night for both guys? I mean it should be fun. Struve is almost always fun.

4- Francimar Barroso vs Aleksandr Rakic

I would never ever ever ever suggest a Framcimar fight BUT Aleksandr Rakic is a really intriguing 205 lb fighter under 30 years old. We know that division needs help so let's see if he's a guy who can do something.

5- Zhabit Magomedsharipov vs Mike Santiago

Mark Henry, Frankie Edgar and Eddie Alvarez have all raved about Zhabit so his UFC debut is of some interest to me. More importantly I wanna see how Mike Santiago looks after fighting a week ago at 155 lbs.

#MMA #UFC #Fight Night #Fight Pass #Struve #Volkov #Europe

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Mexico’s Crisis Of Justice

By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, Dec. 29, 2017

OCOTLAN, MEXICO--One morning in this grim farming town, a Mexican judge who carries a rubber-bullet gun for protection strode into his courtroom to consider the matter of the 11-inch knife.

Slumped at the defendant’s table was David Ramos, a day laborer charged with attempted homicide for participating in a drunken knife fight. Ramos had already spent 16 days in jail. But Judge Juan Antonio Rubio Gutiérrez had discovered a glaring irregularity.

In the initial paperwork, no one mentioned where police found the plastic-handled blade. When the point had been raised, the missing information suddenly appeared in a new shade of blue ink. Rubio Gutiérrez decided that the information was dubious and that the defendant could walk.

“Procedurally speaking, a knife no longer exists,” the judge told Ramos in the courtroom earlier this month. “Today, you have recovered your freedom.”

The scene playing out in this new one-room courthouse represents a radical departure from the old Mexican traditions of law and order.

Mexico is completing its first full year of a new accusatory justice system, following the most profound overhaul of its legal structure in a century. The most visible sign of the transformation is public trials instead of a secretive process involving written arguments. But the changes go far deeper. Both Mexican and U.S. officials have described the system as crucial to restoring order to a country torn apart by drug violence.

So far, the results have been chaos.

Bickering and confusion reign at each link in the legal chain. Police complain of hours lost on laborious forms; prosecutors blame judges for setting criminals free; judges accuse poorly trained police of botching crime scenes. Powerful drug cartels, meanwhile, are exploiting the weaknesses in the new system and strong-arming authorities with death threats and bribes.

The upheaval has come during the deadliest year in Mexico’s modern history. Politicians here increasingly blame the judicial changes for emptying jails and fanning crime. Even those who embrace the new legal system worry about its first-year fiascos.

“The reform is going badly,” José Ramón Cossío, a justice on Mexico’s Supreme Court, said in an interview. “There are many small problems that, taken together, are causing what I believe to be an important crisis.”

It is hard to overstate the significance of the restructuring. It seeks to turn the notoriously ineffective police into professional investigators. It strengthens the independence of judges. It provides more rights to defendants in a country where authorities have been known to demand bribes, extract confessions under torture and doctor evidence.

The U.S. government is deeply invested in the project, contributing more than $300 million since 2008 to equip courthouses and train police and legal personnel.

Even in rural outposts such as Ocotlan, the system has ushered in many trappings of high-tech justice: courthouses with surveillance cameras and fingerprint sensors; forensic investigators at crime scenes in latex gloves and protective footwear.

But the exacting new procedures have been grafted onto feeble, corruption-plagued institutions created decades ago by an authoritarian state.

Judges are demanding the kind of legal precision found in Washington or London, from police who sometimes can barely read and live in places that can feel like war zones.

“This is a baby that has just been born,” Rubio Gutiérrez said in an interview. “We are asking the system to run, and it is not possible.”

The western state of Jalisco is home to the most dangerous drug cartel in Mexico, a network of traffickers and assassins who have shot down an army helicopter, ambushed federal police and sent a pig’s head to the former attorney general’s home. Cartel Jalisco New Generation represents the ultimate test of the fledgling legal system.

This year, crime has been winning. The state has recorded 1,218 homicides through November, putting it on pace for its deadliest year in the past two decades of available statistics. In Ocotlan, home to many cartel gunmen, traffickers and police have clashed. Not far away, bodies have been discovered in mass graves.

It was in this unnerving atmosphere that Rubio Gutiérrez began his job last year in the state’s fourth judicial district.

A youthful jurist with a quick stride and confident air, Rubio Gutiérrez, 37, was quick to embrace the new system. He wrote a 385-page book about it. He has opened an institute to teach lawyers about the big legal shift underway: from written proceedings to oral trials, with an explicit presumption of innocence.

The first person in his family to graduate from college, Rubio Gutiérrez began as an unpaid courthouse aide. As he rose through the judicial ranks, he witnessed a system in meltdown. Crime was soaring, judicial backlogs were massive and only a tiny fraction of crimes ever resulted in convictions.

At the same time, penitentiaries were flooded with people caught carrying guns or small amounts of drugs. Their cases could drag on for years before they were sentenced.

“There were many injustices,” Rubio Gutiérrez said.

Now judges have far more leeway to release suspects pending trial. The new system provides alternatives such as mediation or plea bargaining to ease the congestion in the court system.

The result has been fewer people behind bars. Mexico has about 202,700 prisoners, down from nearly 235,900 when the changes went into effect in June 2016, according to prison authorities. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera said last month that there are 11,000 fewer inmates in the capital than in the year before the judicial revisions started--a decline of nearly 30 percent--a situation he called “very dangerous.”

Judges now have greater power to toss out charges when a suspect’s rights have been violated. Rubio Gutiérrez and many other judges blame the high number of suspects released on errors by poorly trained police and prosecutors. Often these are paperwork mistakes by police unaccustomed to the new 22-page incident report that is required for every arrest or crime scene. The chain of custody for evidence is regularly violated.

One recent afternoon, Rubio Gutiérrez drove to Ocotlan’s neighboring town, Jamay, to lecture the local police force about how to avoid errors and document their cases.

“I’m not a mind reader. I’m a judge,” he told them. “Help yourselves out.”

The police listened respectfully. But a few days later, their police chief, Fidel Moreno Robledo, sat in his cramped office and laid out the reality of a small rural force.

Of the 16 officers theoretically available on any shift, several are detailed to guard government buildings, while others are often injured or on vacation, leaving fewer than five able to patrol a municipality of 25,000 people, he said. His men get paid $400 per month and receive no life insurance or social security. All this, in a town where last year police recovered 20 bodies floating down the Lerma River, one of the many drug-war front lines in Mexico.

“We are weak,” Moreno said.

And the new system, he said, has made them weaker.

About 20 policemen have been fired for failing the national background tests intended to weed out corruption. Now, police can’t enter houses as easily without a warrant, which are often hard to get. Suspects have the right to remain silent; police must justify stops and searches. If there is the “smallest error” in paperwork or a delay getting a detainee before a judge, Moreno said, a “criminal, a kidnapper, a killer, gets set free.”

The push to overhaul Mexico’s legal system began a decade ago as violence flared across the country. Former Mexican president Felipe Calderón had declared war on drug cartels in 2006, and the death toll began to mount.

The old legal structure couldn’t cope with the bloodshed. It was based on the inquisitorial system, also used in other parts of Latin America, but it was shaped by the authoritarian, one-party system that defined Mexico for most of the 20th century. Police were often seen as an instrument of control--not investigation. Judicial appointees, meanwhile, were expected to be loyal to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Judges rarely disagreed with the written cases put together by prosecutors.

The deadline to adopt the accusatory system was June 2016. Many states waited until just months out to start the shift. Federal and state governments spent a fraction of what was required, according to Héctor Díaz Santana, the former head of the organization in charge of implementing the changes.

“We have poorly trained, unprofessional police, poorly paid prosecutors accustomed to the old ways, judges that were very comfortable before because you never saw them,” he said. “They created a very demanding system when we practically don’t have the tools.”

When Salvador Caro Cabrera took over as Guadalajara police chief in October 2015, only 80 of his 2,600 policemen had received any training on the new protocols for collecting evidence, writing up crime scenes or interacting with prosecutors.

“We have had a period of great confusion,” he said.

In the latter half of this year, the Guadalajara crime rate has more than doubled over the rate in the first half of 2016, before the new judicial system began, Caro Cabrera said. Under the old system, he said, more than 100 people arrested each month went to prison; now only 10 to 15 end up in jail.

The chief said only 50 arrest warrants have been issued in Guadalajara, the state capital, in the past year and a half--while there are 1,300 crimes per month.

“The judges are a disaster,” Caro Cabrera said.

The judges have their own concerns. The accusatory system is far more transparent, with prosecutors and defense attorneys arguing in public hearings, as in the United States. But that can be unsettling, even to defenders of the changes, like Rubio Gutiérrez.

Unlike the old system, in which judges signed off on mountains of paperwork behind closed doors, Rubio Gutiérerez sits behind a blond-wood bench at hearings and looks the suspects--and the public--in the face.

“It’s much more dangerous. You are in front of the criminals,” he said.

One day last month in Guadalajara, a cooler containing body parts was placed outside a courthouse. A note warned a judge: “You’re next.”

Because it’s difficult to get a weapons permit, Rubio Gutiérrez bought an “Angel Guardian” rubber bullet pistol. Earlier this year, someone hurled from the street a wrapped-up knife that bounced off his office window.

“We don’t have protection, guns, nothing,” he said.

Under the old system, most Mexican police had little role in investigations and were supposed to focus on preventing crime. The new protocols require them to rigorously process crime scenes.

But follow-up remains a glaring weakness as the system takes hold. And impunity remains high.

“The problem is not that people are getting out of prison,” said Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona, a law professor at the University of Guadalajara who is an expert on the judicial revisions. “It’s that they are not going in.”

The case of Luz Margarita Ramirez Gallardo, a 35-year-old woman found dead in her van, shows how the new system still isn’t stopping crime.

Early on Nov. 2, just over a month before Ramirez was killed, two gunmen approached her as she was backing her van out of the garage in the working-class Olimpica neighborhood of Guadalajara. They told her to hand over the keys and then “they shot her,” according to her 18-year-old son, Jonatan Ramirez.

Ramirez was hit twice in the face and lost her right eye but somehow survived.

The police appeared to handle the crime scene professionally. But Ramirez’s family says that after the first day, police and prosecutors never asked them for more information about the shooting. No arrests were made.

Aldo Monjardín, a police commander in southern Guadalajara, questioned Ramirez in the hospital. He found her story of a robbery suspicious, he recalled; nothing had been stolen, including the van.

Monjardín noticed what he believed were breast implants, as Ramirez lay supine in the hospital bed. He assumed she was the girlfriend of some cartel figure and had crossed the wrong narco.

“Women love to go out with these guys,” he said.

Authorities denied they had shrugged off the investigation. An official from the attorney general’s office in Jalisco said the Ramirez family had not been forthcoming. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, refused to answer further questions about the case. Prosecutors say witnesses are often too afraid to talk, even more so now that proceedings are in open court.

Many prosecutors are also not used to assembling complex cases. In the past, they often relied on confessions from suspects--sometimes criminals caught in the act, sometimes people who admitted to a crime under torture.

“The new system is totally opposite” to the old, said Alejandro Torres Ramirez, 32, a prosecutor in Jalisco. “First you have to investigate and get proof together to be able to arrest someone, something that we’re not used to, culturally.”

Within a couple weeks, Ramirez was back home and working again. On the afternoon of Dec. 5, a man got out of a gray BMW, walked up to the passenger window of her van and shot her dead.

A neighbor, who identified himself only as Hugo, said he had called the city’s emergency number at least four times about suspicious vehicles on the street in the two weeks leading up to the murder. “The police never arrived,” he said. The police said a patrol passed by the scene about 10 minutes before the killing but saw nothing suspicious.

The chaos in the new judicial system and rising crime rates in Mexico have prompted politicians to call for major revisions in the protocols; some even openly yearn for the old procedures.

Many judicial officials insist regressing would be disaster. They say the changes will eventually encourage more rigorous investigations and make Mexico’s legal system more transparent and effective.

Those future benefits are of little consolation to the Ramirez family.

Some of her relatives assume the police who investigated her case were bought off by criminals, but Enrique Ramirez Gallardo, her eldest brother, doesn’t agree.

“I think they are just overwhelmed by all they have to do,” he said. “Unfortunately, what happened to my sister happens every day.”

#Mexico #Mexican justice system #Mexican legal system

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